From global complexity to local reality: Aligning implementation pathways for the Sustainable Development Goals and landscape approaches

The Global Landscapes Forums held in Warsaw (November 2013) and Lima (December 2014), coupled with the CGIAR Development Dialogues (New York, September 2014), have helped position landscape approaches at the center of sustainable development initiatives and global discourse.

The Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and its many partners continue to devise ways to best introduce a holistic and integrated landscapes approach to balance trade-offs between conservation and development, including agriculture, with the aim of influencing both policy and practice.

The adoption of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in September this year, following a more than two-year process of open negotiation, is very timely. The 17 goals, with their 169 targets, provide an ambitious set of objectives for the 200+ nations that have committed to end poverty (Goal 1), end hunger (Goal 2), and protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems (Goal 15), among others.

These goals represent a departure from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that have guided the global development agenda during 20002015. The UN SDG report now applies to all countries and nation states irrespective of development status, making commitment to the SDGs a truly global endeavor (UNGA 2015).